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The old arcade games have been remade in one form or another since the first home PC appeared, but the real retro game revolution got big in the early 90’s with tons of modern adaptations of old arcade games like Asteroids and Centipede for our home computer. The retro craze exploded when emulation hit the scene, and today you can play almost any arcade game released before 1993 using the plethora of emulator programs for the PC.

It’s 1999 now, and it’s time to consider games from the late 80’s or even the early 90’s retro. One of my favorite PC games of that era was Syndicate, and Eidos and Hothouse Productions are bringing us an eerie combination of the gameplay from Syndicate, the atmosphere of Fallout, and graphics straight out of an early 90’s Capcom arcade game. They call this game Abomination.

In Abomination a plague has spread across the USA and devastated everything in its path. Many of those who haven’t already died of blood loss through every pore in their body have formed a cult preaching the domination of the Brood. They’re no pacifists, either. Armed to the teeth, their goal is to convert or kill anyone in their path.

The government has not sat idle, though. They responded by placing into action a team of genetically altered soldiers from the most elite branches of the military. Their mission is essentially to save what is left of the world.

This is where you enter the story. You take control of four soldiers per mission and embark to eliminate the threat of the Faithful. The gameplay is almost identical to that of Syndicate. You can assign team members to hotkeys, and then click to tell them where to move, shoot, or search. The movement is very intelligent – if you click somewhere that is hard to reach like the roof of a building, your agents figure out the shortest path there and take it. This saves you a lot of hassle because you can assign team members to go to different parts of the screen and not worry about them getting stuck somewhere.

The demo of Abomination features three missions:

• Find and deactivate the toxic gas bombs that are hidden around the city.
• Defend a group of buildings from the Faithful’s assault.
• Find and destroy a car containing a big toxic gas bomb within 250 seconds.

Combat is accomplished by selecting your agents and clicking on an enemy. If the path to the target isn’t blocked, your agents will open fire until the opponent has been destroyed. The demo also features three modes of AI attack for your soldiers, though I couldn’t get them to work. When set to return fire and fire at will, my agents just stood around taking hits until I told them to kill the person shooting at them. The auto fire modes are mentioned in the readme, though not described so they may not be implemented yet.

The thing that really struck me about Abomination is the graphics. The colors and styles of the city and people look just like they came from a Capcom arcade game from the early 90’s, like Cadillacs And Dinosaurs or Strider. The colors are bright pastels, and the shading on the buildings and cars is very detailed. The explosions also look like they’re from a Capcom game, too. Most of the cars and any animated scenery is a target you can shoot at. The result is usually just an explosion, but it’s fun, anyway.

The blood and gut settings are adjustable, with the default being maximum gore. In this setting every gunshot gives off a spurt of blood, and explosive deaths send body parts flying everywhere. Once spilled, the blood stays on the ground for the entire mission. In staying with the style of the graphics, the gore isn’t very realistic, so don’t worry about being grossed out.